


Play It Again

by bicycles



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon, Episode: s04e12 Still, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 05:12:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2495693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bicycles/pseuds/bicycles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if the Still episode had featured a miraculously functioning radio instead of a game of 'Never Have I Ever'? This is what happens when Beth asks Daryl to dance, sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play It Again

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my friend, who hopefully will appreciate the tragedy of our ship. It's mostly an impressionistic attempt to redraw what happened in 4.12.

The world as they knew it had ended a long time ago, long enough that Beth was pretty sure this was it. These were the cards they'd be dealt, and they were just going to have to play them. She hadn't given up, necessarily. She still believed in a happy ending, but maybe that ending didn't come from an outside player. Maybe it was just up to them to make it.

Some days proved harder than others to keep faith. Some days, they'd walk for miles without a thing in sight. There might a squirrel, way up in the trees, or maybe not. Maybe those days they'd roast snakes over a fire pit and hope walkers didn't come close. Those were days she wanted to lie down in the dirt and cry. 

But she didn't.

She kept walking. She kept walking and killing walkers and raiding vehicles along the side of the road. She became stronger, maybe, or maybe just a little colder. She didn't know anymore. Each night digging a fire pit as she waited for Daryl to come back with whatever he'd been able to find, she just didn't know. 

"Do you think the others are out there?"

They were sitting on opposite sides of the fire, not really looking at each other. She was looking at the string of hubcaps looped around their camp; he was - she noticed - staring at a distant point that she couldn't quite see. He looked over at her when she spoke, but didn't answer.

"I think they are," she said. "I think we're going to find them."

She didn't care that he was silent, surly even. All that mattered was that he was there when she needed him. They had a system, and it worked. It was what kept them alive when no amount of stealth could prevent a swarm from coming down on them. And she knew that if she had him, the others must be safe, too. They must be together, somewhere, just waiting for them to waltz back into camp. 

But believing in that somewhere and getting there was a different matter.

"I need a drink." 

She looked over at Daryl, skinning a snake. "Did you hear me?"

"We got plenty of water."

"No, I mean, a drink." She emphasized the last word. "Like alcohol."

It had been a long week for both of them. The brightest light at the end of the tunnel had been finding that damn snake, and if that's all she had to look forward to for the night, she didn't know what was going to stop her from just giving up. She knew she couldn't do that, so she did the next best thing.

She left.

The walker almost had her before an arrow pierced its brain. His hand was on her shoulder, dragging her back towards the camp, but she pulled away.

"No." And she turned back into the woods…

"Where you think you're going?"

"I told you. To get a drink."

She heard him following her. Maybe she wasn't a skilled tracker, but she seemed to hear each of those steady footfalls behind her, each falling in time to the thumping of her heart. She was scared and acting stupid, she knew that. But it didn't seem to matter much right now, not with the end of the world facing them down point-blank. 

They found the golf course, first, but it was overrun. Barely made it out alive, all over a broken bottle of peach schnapps and stupid need to forget everything. She hated herself for that, but he didn't seem to care. She hated that, too. She hated that faked sense of indifference, the way he seemed to shrug his shoulders and just keep moving. She knew he cared, and what's more, she knew he didn't want anyone to know that. 

"What's that?"

She nodded to the tray of glass jars that he was carrying. 

"Moonshine."

It tasted like shit the first time it went down, and the second. She didn't like it, but she drank because that's what she wanted to do, and she figured you were supposed to be a little bit selfish now. Maybe that's how people survived, kept hope, kept from throwing themselves down in that soft dirt and just letting go. She wasn't one of those types, anyway; she was a survivor.

The others were survivors, too.

"You think this get's anything?" 

He held up a tiny wireless radio attached to a cassette player. It looked like one of those old things she might have found out at her grandparents but never really used. He was fiddling around with it now, and suddenly, a loud scratchy noise, and then music. 

"The radio still works?"

"Nah, it's got one of those funky cassettes in it… Jesus, I thought they stopped making these ages ago. My dad had one and…" He stopped, looking at her. "Well, it don't matter much." He switched the radio off and shoved it back on a shelf. "Need those batteries for something better."

"Ain't nothing better than music when you're down," she said, standing up. The world was a little bit shaky from all that moonshine, but it righted itself soon enough. She crossed over to where he'd left the radio, switching it back on. "C'mon…"

"If you askin' me to dance, that ain't about to happen', sweetheart. Maybe I should take you back to church."

His words hurt her. "Well, fuck it, if you ain't going to dance, I will. Don't need you anyway."

"Is that right?"

"Yea…" She swallowed, feeling the bitter taste of the moonshine at the back of her throat. 

"Think you can take care of yourself?"

He was looking at her, speaking now. It was like for the first time in days they were together, and not off in their own separate worlds, worried about whatever the hell it was they worried about. She couldn't read his mind. Maybe he wasn't worried about anything. Maybe, but she doubted it. 

"I can, and I do. Don't need your dumb roasted snakes and your attitude. Just because you don't want to believe this is happening, that we're going to find the others, that this is going to work out…"

His hand was on hers before she could finish her thought, his other hand at her waist. "You want me to believe that?" Despite the gentle way that he held her, she could feel the anger radiating off him. "That why you want to dance the night away? Like a damn fairy tale?"

She didn't let go, couldn't have stepped back even if she wanted to. "Who cares if it's a damn fairy tale to you? It'll happen. You'll see."

"Hm." He nudged her foot backwards, forcing it into an awkward slow step that she didn't know he knew. "Like prince charming, right? Sweeping you off your feet?" 

She pulled away. Suddenly, the anger coursed through her, amplified by the alcohol. "Don't you do that," she said. "Don't make your feelings about me. You're hurt because you care, and maybe you think you can hide that, but you ain't doing a very good job, Daryl Dixon. You ain't ever done a good job of it, and especially not now..."

She stormed out of that room, right out onto the porch overlooking those woods. She hated those woods right now: peaceful, silent, deadly. She couldn't go into them, like she might have wanted to, couldn't just run off and leave him here. They had to stick together, and maybe it was more than that. 

She turned, hearing him behind her. The radio was off again. The air heavy and still all around them. "I ain't sorry for what I said."

"Me either." 

She let him wrap his arms around her, pull her closer to him. He smelled like smoke, moonshine, and a faint, swampy odor that seemed to be all around them. It was that that made her hold on tighter, bury her face into his vest and breathe. 

"You still want to dance?" His words, not hers. 

She looked up at him, wondering what made him look at her like that, even now. "Not right now."

"Alright."

She smiled a little bit, thinking back to earlier. "Where'd you learn that?"

"The two-step? Ain't nothing. Merle taught me that when we were laying about somewhere, trying to get some girls to go out with us…"

"Did it work?"

"What do you think?" His hands rested at the small of her back, holding her there. "Wasn't really interested in it, to be honest. Merle'd usually be the one to initiate, and then…"

"You telling me you ain't interested in women?"

"Maybe some women." 

She seemed to tense up inside when he looked at her. "Only some?"

"Yea."

She didn't know how long they stood there, not really saying much. Time didn't much matter out there. It was just a sum of days, of sunrises and sunsets. Each one seemed to carry its own set of troubles. Some were bad, bad enough maybe to just give it all up. It was the other days that counted, the days they aired their troubles and got right back up again, the days when he held her, or he didn't. It wasn't about _him_. It wasn't really about either of them.

There weren't happy endings in the world no more. Maybe there never had been. Maybe there never would be. She was too old for fairy tales, anyway. 


End file.
